John 18:36, Romans 12:1-2 and 1John 2:15-17 are perhaps some of the most often used passages in Scripture highlighting the nature of the Christian faith and life. All three address the truth that God's kingdom does not originate in the created material realm, but comes to it, and is in conflict with all that is not OF God's kingdom. It may be safe to say that all the difficulties we possess as Christians can be summarized as our failure to understand and respond obediently to the truth that even though God's kingdom is not of the world, it is, nonetheless, in the world. Fundamentally, this means that all the blessings and curses of God's covenant, or all that marks God's kingdom, originate with God. God brings these to the created realm in his own personal presence in and with the creation, through his Word and Spirit. Put another way, we experience God's blessing or curse, ultimately, not because we grab hold of some aspect of creation and bend it to our will and powers, but because God bends our will and powers to himself through his Word and Spirit.

Among Christians, there is great controversy, and even disdain for the notion that God could and would actively curse through his Word and Spirit. Yet, from God's initial response to Adam's and Eve's sin, all the way through the Scriptures, we see that God curses and does not merely bless through his Word and Spirit. Perhaps the most disturbing of all texts highlighting this point are Isaiah 6:1-13 and Matthew 13:10-17. Jesus told parables not merely to bless his disciples with a right understanding of the mysteries of the kingdom, but also to withhold his kingdom from those to whom it had not been given. He quotes from Isaiah to explain this point, thus revealing that his teaching in parables is organically related to and the fulfillment of the ministry of Isaiah.

There is much that could be developed regarding this truth, but I want to simply focus on this point: God brings and withholds his kingdom. God does this. The Christian does not do this. The Christian can speak God's word, and should, but God and God alone brings right understanding of his Word by his Spirit or he does not. Thus, it is God and God alone who transforms and curses. Nowhere in Scripture is the Church given the duty to "transform" the culture. God may and does bring transformation through his people, but we do not decide whether a culture is or is not transformed, although we do have the duty and privilege to speak God's word (which primarily takes place in the preaching of the Gospel). The reality of which Jesus spoke in John 18, when he said that his kingdom is not of this world, or from it, was pronounced by Jesus within the context of his going to the cross in order to engage in the final act of obedience that would bring God's kingdom. In other words, he spoke about ministry methodology when he said, "My kingdom is not of this world."

The idea that the Church and individual Christians bring the kingdom of God and are commissioned with the responsibility to "transform the culture" is an implication from, and the fruit of, a view of the Christian faith that can sound very pious. It has a long history. The Pharisees embraced a form of it. It meshes extremely well with most Roman Catholic theology, but it has, perhaps, found its most active expression in the Protestant Liberal theology that has been active in the West for the last 130 years. While many who have advocated the latter were genuinely Christian, those that were, had no accurate understanding of what was really advocated among many of the Protestant Liberal theologians. What Protestant Liberalism (noticed I change from speaking about people to a system of thought--not the same thing) advocates is that Christianity is NOT about a supernatural Triune Personal God bringing something to his creation from outside of it, but that Jesus was only a human being like you and I who showed us the best way to live in order to bring what is called "God's kingdom." This is a view of the Christian faith that makes God's kingdom something you and I bring by our accessing powers or abilities under our control, and that are present in us and the creation as a whole. In short, Christianity is completely naturalistic, and under our power to bring into existence. Thus, the Christian brings the transformation, i.e. the kingdom of God.

Many today, in evangelical churches and para-church ministries, ignorant of church history and the history of Christian theology continue to embrace and espouse a form of Protestant Liberalism. What it produces are ministry methods that place an over emphasis on what the Christian does to the expense of what God does. Indeed, in its most crass forms it virtually dissolves God altogether into the Church and/or the individual Christian. If one understand Roman Catholic theology and especially its understanding of the church, then one can see how similar it is to many of the basic tenets of Protestant Liberalism. In this reconceptualized and distorted view of the gospel, human actions and sincerity become of the utmost importance and play the most vital role in bringing God's kingdom. But just because God's kingdom comes TO the world, is established in it and is transforming it, does not then mean that it is captive to the world so that it becomes our possession to control by whatever scheme or strategy we adopt. This is precisely the sin that Abraham committed in trying to have a child through Hagar, and has been repeated throughout the churches history.

God's kingdom comes to us through his Word and Spirit by his sovereign mercy and grace. What his Word and Spirit produce in the true Christian and then through him or her truly transforms the person and has an effect in the world. But what effect it has is not determined by the Christian. Thus, while having a duty and privilege to live obediently to God, we dare not arrogantly presume that we can or should take upon ourselves the pious sounding responsibility to transform the culture. For while that may sound pious, in the end, it is actually arrogating ourselves to the position that God alone holds. That is hardly an action that receives God's blessing.